Books I Read in January

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

David Graeber

Does a really good job of explaining the problem and how easily it could be solved but leaves me with little hope that it actually will be. 4/5, would recommend.

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons from Modern Life

David Mitchell

Gave up on this one very quickly. Mitchell's bland, conservative, upper-middle-class perspective on inequality (you should be glad you're not a medieval peasant), censorship (you can't say anything these days) and everything else irritated me. 1/5.

Love and Death

Dorothy Cannell, Caroyn Hart, Nancy Pickard, Gar Anthony Haywood, Peter Robinson, Eve Sandstrom, Ed Gorman, Margaret Maron, Jean Hager, Robert J. Randisi, M. D. Lake, Susan Dunlap, Marilyn Wallace, and Kathy Hogan Trocheck

Overall I didn't like this book but I didn't hate it. The only story I actually liked wasn't even about love or death, and most of the rest were about sleazy old men who hate their wives. 2/5.

• Bridal Flowers: Even though the author grew up in England, her writing reads very American-writing-English. It's also painfully unsubtle and the protagonists far too sure of themselves. 1/5
• Away for Safekeeping: This one seems like it would make a good Poker Face episode, with some minor changes. 3/5
• A Girl Like You: A woman who literally exists only to be a prop in men's stories. 1/5
• Company Wife: Saw the ending coming a mile off. 1/5
• Secrets: Not much to this one. 2/5
• The First One to Blink: Stretching so far for a novel idea that you reach right out of the realm of plausibility. 2/5
• The Tunnel: Another one that seems like it would make a good adaptation, but lacks depth on the page. 3/5
• Till 3:45: This is the one I liked. A fun little adventure. 4/5
• A Night at the Love Nest Resort: I can see what they were going for but it doesn't work. They seem to have had two conflicting ideas and tried to do both. 2/5
• Tea for Two: I'm not sure what the point of this one was supposed to be. 1/5
• April in Paris: Yet another entitled narcissist. This book is full of them. 1/5
• The People's Way: Racist garbage. 1/5
• Love at First Byte: This one is trying so hard to be clever but it isn't. 1/5
• The Collaboration: A very unsatisfying conclusion, both to this story and to the book as a whole. 1/5

Weddings Are Murder

Valerie Wolzien

This book is stressful, frustrating and exhausting to read.

You know those people who have to micromanage everything but they're terrible at it so even though they're constantly busy they never seem to get anything done? This book is like a window into such a person's mind. It's a nightmare. I wanted to tell the protagonist to stop, take a moment, pick one thing to focus on and get it done. Because the entire book she's rushing from one half-finished task to another - and very few conversations go uninterrupted.

On top of that, the mystery gets almost no focus and my reaction to finding out who the killer was was "Wait, who is that?" There are too many characters and they are not distinct enough. Aside from the protagonist almost no one is fleshed out at all. And the protagonist's confusion and lack of focus is very much reflected in the way the book is written so, just as she has trouble figuring out who anyone is, so did I. 2/5.

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

Much shorter and simpler than I was expecting. Left me with questions about how the society depicted was supposed to function, what other people did within it, especially the ruling class, and what position, relatively speaking, did Beatty occupy within the heirarchy? He obviously knew a lot more than his subordinates, but it wasn't clear whether that was due to his own research or if he was part of the conspiracy at a high level. Not really relevant to the story being told, but just evidence of how fascinated I became by the book as I normally don't give two shits about "lore" or "worldbuilding". 4/5

The Case of the Weird Sisters

Charlotte Armstrong

The mystery is good and the characters are fine. I really liked the way the author put me in the mind of the protagonist, how strongly her emotional state was reflected in the way the other characters and situations came across. When she first arrives in the Whitlock house, it and its inhabitants really seem vile, but as she gains more confidence and familiarity that feeling shrinks away and the sisters shrink to more human proportions and even become somewhat relatable. The only part that didn't resonate with me at all was the romance; I spent the whole book thinking "I hope she doesn't end up with X" (because it's telegraphed pretty clearly, honestly) and of course she does. But otherwise the climax and wrap-up were very satisfying. 4/5